Ah, jumping in late here. But I don't buy the yield protection argument about Stanford.... I mean, I don't think the people who have high numbers who are getting rejected are rejected as the result of yield protection. I know more than one person -- who did not have personal ties to CA -- who chose Stanford over Harvard. And I met several people at the YLS admitted students thing who said that had they not been accepted at Yale, they would have picked Stanford over Harvard. Stanford is most definitely competing with YLS and HLS for students, and I don't think they're conceding their inferiority and waitlisting students they're guessing will pick Yale or Harvard. my fifty cents.

Ah, jumping in late here. But I don't buy the yield protection argument about Stanford.... I mean, I don't think the people who have high numbers who are getting rejected are rejected as the result of yield protection. I know more than one person -- who did not have personal ties to CA -- who chose Stanford over Harvard. And I met several people at the YLS admitted students thing who said that had they not been accepted at Yale, they would have picked Stanford over Harvard. Stanford is most definitely competing with YLS and HLS for students, and I don't think they're conceding their inferiority and waitlisting students they're guessing will pick Yale or Harvard. my fifty cents.

H4CS mentioned SLS not giving ppl decisions until after deposit deadlines and claiming that their apps were incomplete but if they committed to enrolling, that they would get in. He said he met about 20 ppl that this happened to--that's kinda shady and reaks of yp to me.

BTW, Thanks, goalie! I have actually heard from someone in one top law school's administration that Stanford does lose the battle with Yale (only a handful of cross-admits go to Stanford) but with Harvard, it's not as clear cut.

It's very clear cut. Stanford's yield is below 50%, Harvard's is above 60%. Furthermore, Stanford's smallness allows it to select the people who they think are the most likely to choose Stanford over Harvard and Yale. As far as I can tell, most of the people who get rejected from S and who get into H or Y are people that Stanford honestly doesn't believe will attend. That's just not true of the people who get into H but not Y. Also, as MCB mentioned, Stanford cooks the books more than its peers (including NYU, which seems to have stopped this). They got caught including their entire physical plant in per-student expenditure recently. And to clarify, the #20 is an estimate of how many people are affected by that policy, not the number of people I've personally met. And it seems that Harvard is doing something similar with its waitlist this year, which is disappointing. But yeah, my guess is that 10-15% of Stanford's class gave a firm commitment to attend before they were accepted, which really trumps anyone else. It's in a tough spot, but it's only doing this to maintain some illusion that there is a difference between HYS and other schools.

If Stanford practiced generally-accepted admissions practices, my guess is that it's admissions rate would be closer to 10-12%.

ahh I see, thanks for the clarification about the #20. I pretty much agree with what you said--it shocked the hell out of me when Curly didn't get into SLS last year after sweeping everything else with $$.

ahh I see, thanks for the clarification about the #20. I pretty much agree with what you said--it shocked the hell out of me when Curly didn't get into SLS last year after sweeping everything else with $$.

There's another layer of complexity here as well, regarding Black and non-Mexican Latino/Latina students. There's an understanding that Stanford as an institution and Palo Alto as a city is stiflingly white. The validity of this belief is an open question, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Stanford admissions team worries about this as well, feeling that there would be no way to get someone like Curly to come.

ahh I see, thanks for the clarification about the #20. I pretty much agree with what you said--it shocked the hell out of me when Curly didn't get into SLS last year after sweeping everything else with $$.

There's another layer of complexity here as well, regarding Black and non-Mexican Latino/Latina students. There's an understanding that Stanford as an institution and Palo Alto as a city is stiflingly white. The validity of this belief is an open question, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Stanford admissions team worries about this as well, feeling that there would be no way to get someone like Curly to come.

i agree. like, if i had trinity #s, i still wouldn't have applied there for that very reason. a iknow a few ppl (blk) that though they got in, pretty much crossed it off their lists for that reason (ie, they would have gone had they not gotten into H or Y).

i agree. like, if i had trinity #s, i still wouldn't have applied there for that very reason. a iknow a few ppl (blk) that though they got in, pretty much crossed it off their lists for that reason (ie, they would have gone had they not gotten into H or Y).

Right, which leads to Stanford having fewer Black students and so on. What's interesting is that I don't think Yale practices any of this with regards to openly gay students, especially those with any background in activism. I suspect more than any discernable subcategory of applicants, this is where Harvard would trounce Yale in crossadmits. Yet Yale will go after students and play hardball to try to win them away, thinking that they can overcome any perceived advantage that Harvard has, including sheer size. I've seen it work (and fail). Stanford just seems a little fatalistic on this point. Their loss.

To be fair to Stanford, their yield itself is probably somewhat deceptive. Yale and Stanford accept a lot of the same people, and Yale's ridiculous yield must do nasty things to Stanford as a result of Stanford's small class size. While Harvard also factors into the equation (and also loses its fair share of cross-admits to Yale), its larger size works to make that less of a harm to their own yield.

That said, I still think Harvard probably beats out Stanford on cross admits, and probably somewhat clearly too. While the 20% yield difference is likely deceptive, it's still a 20% yield difference.

I agree with Inspector Javert on this. If you look at the hard numbers, approximately 270 people turn down Harvard every year and 230 people turn down Stanford. Considering that HYS are competing for pretty much the same students, the loss of Yale cross-admits (anywhere from 100-150 of those 200+ students) does a lot more to hurt Stanford's yield than it does to hurt Harvard's yield. The only real competition to HYS are the big scholarships at CCN and maybe the Darrow--and I don't think that many people take those over HYS.

Right, which leads to Stanford having fewer Black students and so on. What's interesting is that I don't think Yale practices any of this with regards to openly gay students, especially those with any background in activism. I suspect more than any discernable subcategory of applicants, this is where Harvard would trounce Yale in crossadmits. Yet Yale will go after students and play hardball to try to win them away, thinking that they can overcome any perceived advantage that Harvard has, including sheer size. I've seen it work (and fail). Stanford just seems a little fatalistic on this point. Their loss.

Purely anecdotal, but I got much more LGBT-related recruiting from Yale than Harvard. Yale sent me all their Outlaw information, put on a big gay party during admit weekend, invited LGBT'ers to the minority admits day, and even had one of my bf's friends (now a Yale 2L) try to convince me to attend. Harvard, on the other hand, never sent me any LGBT-related correspondence and didn't have very much diversity-specific programming during its ASW (sorry absy!).

To be fair to Stanford, their yield itself is probably somewhat deceptive. Yale and Stanford accept a lot of the same people, and Yale's ridiculous yield must do nasty things to Stanford as a result of Stanford's small class size. While Harvard also factors into the equation (and also loses its fair share of cross-admits to Yale), its larger size works to make that less of a harm to their own yield.

That said, I still think Harvard probably beats out Stanford on cross admits, and probably somewhat clearly too. While the 20% yield difference is likely deceptive, it's still a 20% yield difference.

I agree with Inspector Javert on this. If you look at the hard numbers, approximately 270 people turn down Harvard every year and 230 people turn down Stanford. Considering that HYS are competing for pretty much the same students, the loss of Yale cross-admits (anywhere from 100-150 of those 200+ students) does a lot more to hurt Stanford's yield than it does to hurt Harvard's yield. The only real competition to HYS are the big scholarships at CCN and maybe the Darrow--and I don't think that many people take those over HYS.

Right, which leads to Stanford having fewer Black students and so on. What's interesting is that I don't think Yale practices any of this with regards to openly gay students, especially those with any background in activism. I suspect more than any discernable subcategory of applicants, this is where Harvard would trounce Yale in crossadmits. Yet Yale will go after students and play hardball to try to win them away, thinking that they can overcome any perceived advantage that Harvard has, including sheer size. I've seen it work (and fail). Stanford just seems a little fatalistic on this point. Their loss.

Purely anecdotal, but I got much more LGBT-related recruiting from Yale than Harvard. Yale sent me all their Outlaw information, put on a big gay party during admit weekend, invited LGBT'ers to the minority admits day, and even had one of my bf's friends (now a Yale 2L) try to convince me to attend. Harvard, on the other hand, never sent me any LGBT-related correspondence and didn't have very much diversity-specific programming during its ASW (sorry absy!).

Disagree. I think quite a few people take the money at CCNPMVB and even on down the list of the T14. I don't hear of people taking the money at Georgetown or Cornell over a higher ranked school, but frequently people take the money at the other lower ranked T14's. I also would imagine Columbia and NYU with huge scholarships take away a ton more Harvard admits than Stanford admits because of location and size. This may not be true, but I would imagine the type of people who would choose H over S, would also take CN with ($$$) over Stanford.